CRN Channel Madness Results So Far: Tight Race Brewing In Software

We're more than 24 hours into voting in Round 1 of the 2016 CRN Channel Madness Tournament of Chiefs. Let's take a look at the scores so far.

In the Infrastructure region, Cisco's Wendy Bahr is out to a commanding lead over Chris Morgan of Nutanix, leading 60 percent to 40 percent. Bahr is on a quest to become the first Cisco exec to make it out of Round 1 in after last year's Cisco entrants were one and done.

Dell's Cheryl Cook leads Extreme's Bob Gault 57 percent to 43 percent, although Team Gault has mounted a compelling Twitter campaign to get him some more votes.

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Hewlett Packard Enterprise is sitting pretty with both of its representatives out to strong starts. Scott Dunsire leads SimpliVity's George Hope 56 percent to 44 percent, and Kerry Bailey is edging out EMC's Gregg Ambulos by the same margin, 56 percent to 44 percent.

In Hardware, Ruckus's Sandra Glaser Cheek is killing it against Eaton's Curtiz Gangi, leading 69 percent to 31 percent.

HP's Stephanie Dismore is ahead of Lenovo's Sammy Kinlaw 55 percent to 45 percent, while Dismore's HP colleague Jos Brenkel has pulled out in front of Dell's Frank Vitagliano 54 percent to 46 percent.

Intel's Maurits Tichelman came out strong in his contest against Rob McKernan of APC by Schneider Electric. Tichelman leads that one 58 percent to 42 percent.

In the Cloud region we have a number of lopsided contests underway. Channel Madness rookie Rob Rae of Datto is leaving it all on the court, leading Amazon's Terry Wise 74 percent to 26 percent.

VMware's Frank Rauch is turning in an equally strong performance, leading NetSuite's Craig West 72 percent to 28 percent.

And AT&T's Brooks McCorcle is up over tournament newcomer Mike Kunz of StorageCraft 75 percent to 25 percent.

2015 Finalist Adam Famularo of Verizon has more of a fight on his hands but he is leading Carbonite's Jessica Couto by a comfortable margin, 55 percent to 45 percent.

The tightest race of the tournament is brewing in the Software region, where SAP's Rodolpho Cardenuto holds a slim lead over 2015 quarterfinalist Marc Dupaquier of IBM. Cardenuto is ahead 51 percent to 49 percent.

Microsoft's Phil Sorgen is sitting pretty in his matchup, leading Palo Alto's Ron Myers 64 percent to 36 percent.

Red Hat's Mark Enzweiler is leading Fortinet's Joe Sykora 66 percent to 34 percent, possibly helped by his team's Twitter campaign with the hashtag #GetMarkThatTrophy.

And 2015 Channel Madness Champion Mike Valentineof Sophos has started his quest to go back-to-back, leading oracle's Bill Swales 61 percent to 39 percent.

So that's where things sit after Day 1 of Channel Madness. Voting in Round 1 remains open until noon ET on Wednesday, March 23. Visit crn.com/madness to cast your votes and choose your chief!